This week’s Hannibal was fucking brutal, and Margaux and I loved it.
Trevor: Look, Hannibal is a show that prides itself in beauty and brutality in equal measure. I knew that going into this episode. Furthermore, I’ve read Red Dragon probably half a dozen times. That didn’t change the fact that “The Number of the Beast is 666” was genuinely hard to watch. This was a fucking gruesome episode, and through the dark humor I could sense how much Bryan Fuller and director Guillermo Navarro enjoyed making us squirm.
Margaux: Finding out that Guillermo Navarro was the cinematographer on Pan’s Labyrinth definitely helped what was already a, for a lack of a better word, fucked up episode. Though we’ve heard the line, “you owe me awe” uttered before (and “DO YOU SEE?! DO YOU SEE?!”), Richard Armitage has landed on my list of dudes I never wanna see on a darkened street because of this episode. But I’ve already employed use of Chilton’s amazing, should-be catchphrase, “quantifiably bitchy.”
Trevor: Somehow Armitage’s performance has gotten better and more terrifying in every episode since “The Great Red Dragon,” which is a hell of a feat. With any luck this will get him a hell of a lot more work, because the dude is a BEAST, no pun intended.
“666” really pushed Hannibal’s third season into endgame, moreso even than Dolarhyde’s assault on Molly and Walter. Will is pissed, and Hannibal rightly warns of the “wrath of the lamb.” But Will rightly warns that Hannibal has “agency in the world,” which Hannibal proves pretty indisputably.
(Side note: one thing I loved about that scene with Hannibal and Chilton is that Hannibal never once raises his voice. He’s never raised his voice on this show, actually, and scenes like that just do a great job of demonstrating it. One of the most important parts of Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon is Hannibal’s calm demeanor in prison, and Mads Mikkelsen is just absolutely killing that aspect of the role.)
Margaux: You know who else never raises their voice? Bedelia. Her scenes with Will bookended “666”, and though it’s a little more than obvious that she’s Will’s new Hannibal, she brought up two interesting points. Well, one point and one validation of a hunch I’d had this episode. There was a lot to do about art in “666”; the ‘art’ the Red Dragon brings into the world by murdering families, Chilton calling Hannibal a high brow killer vs Dolarhyde. It felt like we were finally connecting Italy to what was happening now, and we’ve talked before about how Italy couldn’t feel further away now. Then Bedelia finally tells Will that what he’s doing (baiting Dolarhyde via Tattler) is “participating”. The way she said the line sent a chill down my spine, not unlike when Bedelia pulled an ice pick out of that Italian professor’s skull and stopped being an observer.
Trevor: All excellent points. The season really has come full circle, which is impressive, considering how stately and baroque the first half was, especially when compared to the brutal, visceral second half.
Which brings us to THAT SCENE. You know the one I mean.
Margaux: I kept waiting for the commercial break to stop my eyes from seeing it, and to also stop yelling, NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. But it just kept going. And I kept yelling. It’s like Bryan Fuller was like, “OH YOU WANT TO CANCEL ME, NBC? NOT BEFORE SOME GUY’S FACE GETS EATEN ON TV. AGAIN. I HOPE THIS BLEEDS INTO THE EVENING NEWS BY ACCIDENT.”
Trevor: It just kept getting worse (the good kind of worse, you know what I mean). Just as Dolarhyde is about to reveal itself, it seems as though the doorbell will provide some release from the tension, but nope! It’s Reba, who is unkowingly just feet away from a naked man glued to a wheelchair. What a great, bizarre choice on Fuller & Co’s part to have Dolarhyde’s romantic life collide with his, um, professional life. Let’s go with that word choice.
Just writing about this is giving me ‘Nam flashbacks. It’s such a crucial scene, and the Red Dragon arc wouldn’t work as well if the show didn’t nail it. Which in retrospect is a stupid thing to worry about. One thing I found myself wondering though: why Chilton? In the book, Dolarhyde’s victim is Freddie Lounds. Do you think Fuller didn’t want to go back to that same well, after giving her the (fake) flaming wheelchair treatment already? Or do you think it’d be too much to watch a woman’s face get eaten on TV? Don’t get me wrong, Chilton is absolutely complicit, and there’s no right or wrong answers to my questions. It just got me thinking.
Margaux: Even in Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon, it’s P.S. Hoffman’s Freddie Lounds who gets his lips bitten (chewed? Eviscerated?) off and then set on fire. Chilton still gets set on fire, and sadly lives to tell about it (I love Jack’s disgusted “did you get that?” when he and Will see a very charcoaled Chilton and cannot understand the words coming outta his mouth). I’m sure, from a showrunner and technical-y standpoint, not dipping back in the Freddie Lounds pond, only to have her face eaten on TV probably didn’t seem as fun as having someone that’s become more despicable even though you’ve already shot him in the face.
Trevor: And then he’s still not dead. Either Raul Esparza has an iron-clad episode agreement in his contract, or Fuller just really likes fucking with Chilton. The sight of him burnt to a crisp, with that horrible rictus in the middle of his face, was deeply unsettling, and that’s coming from someone who’s seen every episode of this goddamn show. “You put your hand on me like a pet.” Lots of chilling lines in “666.”
Margaux: It’s end times on Hannibal, in more ways than one, I can’t believe this is the penultimate episode of the show for…forever! I’m almost as shocked and saddened as Reba was when she hears from “D”’s mouth who he is. Your cutesy nickname ain’t so fuckin’ cutesy anymore, is it, Reba?!
Trevor: And Jesus, just look at Dolarhyde’s face throughout “666.” He is not healing after his Fight Club moment last week, and it looks as though he’s actually deteriorating. Or…transforming? (Nailed it.)
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